How To: Change Natural Scrolling In Mac OS X Lion

If you have updated you Mac to Lion you would no doubt have already noticed the new natural scrolling option which is set to default which Apple would like us all to use.

Essentially, your up and down scrolling of documents and webpages for example is now upside down. Confusing, I know!

To move towards the bottom of a window you will need to scroll in the up direction. Likewise, to go back to a higher level in the window you will need to scroll in the down direction.

On paper and on the iPad/iPhone this idea works. However, long time computer users will find the change in many cases unbearable and thankfully Apple does have an option which allows you to turn this feature off taking you back to the traditional way of scrolling we have all become accustomed to.

Simply launch your system preferences and proceed to mouse or trackpad. I only use the Magic Mouse hence the details below are specific to that device. However, I believe you go to the ‘scroll and zoom’ tab and the same setting for Trackpads as presented below will be available.

Select ‘Mouse’ as highlighted in the image below:

Once open make sure you are in the Point & Click area and the very first option at the top of this area is “Scroll Direction: Natural”. By default this is switched on as shown below:

Simply deselect this option so it appears as shown below:

Then simply close the system preferences and you will notice the next time you view a long form document that scrolling will be returned to the previous method you have been used to all these years.